Matching Items (19)
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- All Subjects: Natural Language Processing
- Creators: Computer Science and Engineering Program
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Description
The objective of this research is to determine an approach for automating the learning of the initial lexicon used in translating natural language sentences to their formal knowledge representations based on lambda-calculus expressions. Using a universal knowledge representation and its associated parser, this research attempts to use word alignment techniques to align natural language sentences to the linearized parses of their associated knowledge representations in order to learn the meanings of individual words. The work includes proposing and analyzing an approach that can be used to learn some of the initial lexicon.
ContributorsBaldwin, Amy Lynn (Author) / Baral, Chitta (Thesis director) / Vo, Nguyen (Committee member) / Industrial, Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
In this paper, I introduce the fake news problem and detail how it has been exacerbated<br/>through social media. I explore current practices for fake news detection using natural language<br/>processing and current benchmarks in ranking the efficacy of various language models. Using a<br/>Twitter-specific benchmark, I attempt to reproduce the scores of six language models<br/>demonstrating their effectiveness in seven tweet classification tasks. I explain the successes and<br/>challenges in reproducing these results and provide analysis for the future implications of fake<br/>news research.
ContributorsChang, Ariz Bay (Author) / Liu, Huan (Thesis director) / Tahir, Anique (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Despite efforts to recruit and retain female engineering students, only about 21.3% of bachelor’s degrees each year in engineering and computer science are awarded to women. The purpose of this synthesis is to understand the ways in which current research has explored how self-identity, engineering identity, and sense of belonging influence undergraduate women’s persistence. Analysis is focused around 4 themes that emerged: (1) Sense of Self: Self-Efficacy, Expectancy Value Theory; (2) Culture of Engineering: Engineering Identity; (3) Stereotype Threat; (4) Interdisciplinary Studies to Expand the Culture of Engineering. Conclusions of this synthesis may be used as opportunities for future engagement with these topics.
ContributorsTapia, Kayla (Author) / Ganesh, Tirupalavanam (Thesis director) / Velez, Jennifer (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
A common design of multi-agent robotic systems requires a centralized master node, which coordinates the actions of all the agents. The multi-agent system designed in this project enables coordination between the robots and reduces the dependence on a single node in the system. This design change reduces the complexity of the central node, and makes the system more adaptable to changes in its topology. The final goal of this project was to have a group of robots collaboratively claim positions in pre-defined formations, and navigate to the position using pose data transmitted by a localization server.
Planning coordination between robots in a multi-agent system requires each robot to know the position of the other robots. To address this, the localization server tracked visual fiducial markers attached to the robots and relayed their pose to every robot at a rate of 20Hz using the MQTT communication protocol. The robots used this data to inform a potential fields path planning algorithm and navigate to their target position.
This project was unable to address all of the challenges facing true distributed multi-agent coordination and needed to make concessions in order to meet deadlines. Further research would focus on shoring up these deficiencies and developing a more robust system.
Planning coordination between robots in a multi-agent system requires each robot to know the position of the other robots. To address this, the localization server tracked visual fiducial markers attached to the robots and relayed their pose to every robot at a rate of 20Hz using the MQTT communication protocol. The robots used this data to inform a potential fields path planning algorithm and navigate to their target position.
This project was unable to address all of the challenges facing true distributed multi-agent coordination and needed to make concessions in order to meet deadlines. Further research would focus on shoring up these deficiencies and developing a more robust system.
ContributorsThibeault, Quinn (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Chen, Yinong (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Even in the largest public university in the country, computer related degrees such as Computer Science, Computer Systems Engineering and Software Engineering have low enrollment rates and high dropout rates. This is interesting because the careers that require these degrees are marketed as the highest paying and most powerful. The goal of this project was to find out what the students of Arizona State University (ASU) thought about these majors and why they did or did not pick them. A total of 206 students were surveyed from a variety of sources including upper level classes, lower level classes and Barrett, the Honors College. Survey questions asked why the students picked their current major, if they had a previous major and why did they switch, and if the students had considered one of the three computer related degrees. Almost all questions were open ended, meaning the students did not have multiple choice answers and instead could write as short or as long of a response as needed. Responses were grouped based on a set of initial hypotheses and any emerging trends. These groups were displayed in several different bar graphs broken down by gender, grade level and category of student (stayed in a computer related degree, left one, joined one or picked a non-computer related degree). Trends included students of all grade levels picking their major because they were passionate or interested in the subject. This may suggest that college students are set in their path and will not switch majors easily. Students also reported seeing computer related degrees as too difficult and intimidating. However, given the low (when compared to all of ASU) number of students surveyed, the conclusions and trends given cannot be representative of ASU as a whole. Rather, they are just representative of this sample population. Further work on this study, if time permitted, would be to try to survey more students and question some of the trends established to find more specific answers.
ContributorsMeza, Edward L (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Miller, Phillip (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
Natural Language Processing and Virtual Reality are hot topics in the present. How can we synthesize these together in order to make a cohesive experience? The game focuses on users using vocal commands, building structures, and memorizing spatial objects. In order to get proper vocal commands, the IBM Watson API for Natural Language Processing was incorporated into our game system. User experience elements like gestures, UI color change, and images were used to help guide users in memorizing and building structures. The process to create these elements were streamlined through the VRTK library in Unity. The game has two segments. The first segment is a tutorial level where the user learns to perform motions and in-game actions. The second segment is a game where the user must correctly create a structure by utilizing vocal commands and spatial recognition. A standardized usability test, System Usability Scale, was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the game. A survey was also created in order to evaluate a more descriptive user opinion. Overall, users gave a positive score on the System Usability Scale and slightly positive reviews in the custom survey.
ContributorsOrtega, Excel (Co-author) / Ryan, Alexander (Co-author) / Kobayashi, Yoshihiro (Thesis director) / Nelson, Brian (Committee member) / Computing and Informatics Program (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
For those interested in the field of robotics, there are not many options to get your hands on a physical robot without paying a steep price. This is why the folks at BCN3D Technologies decided to design a fully open-source 3D-printable robotic arm. Their goal was to reduce the barrier to entry for the field of robotics and make it exponentially more accessible for people around the world. For our honors thesis, we chose to take the design from BCN3D and attempt to build their robot, to see how accessible the design truly is. Although their designs were not perfect and we were forced to make some adjustments to the 3D files, overall the work put forth by the people at BCN3D was extremely useful in successfully building a robotic arm that is programmed with ease.
ContributorsCohn, Riley (Co-author) / Petty, Charles (Co-author) / Ben Amor, Hani (Thesis director) / Yong, Sze Zheng (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
With the progression of different industries moving away from employing secretaries for business professionals and professors, there exists a void in the area of personal assistance. This problem has existing solutions readily available to replace this service, i.e. secretary or personal assistant, tend to range from expensive and useful to inexpensive and not efficient. This leaves a low cost niche into the market of a virtual office assistant or manager to display messages and to help direct people in obtaining contact information. The development of a low cost solution revolves around the software needed to solve the various problems an accessible and user friendly Virtual Interface in which the owner of the Virtual Office Manager/Assistant can communicate to colleagues who are at standby outside of the owner's office and vice versa. This interface will be allowing the owner to describe the status pertaining to their absence or any other message sent to the interface. For example, the status of the owner's work commute can be described with a simple "Running Late" phrase or a message like "Busy come back in 10 minutes". In addition, any individual with an interest to these entries will have the opportunity to respond back because the device will provide contact information. When idle, the device will show supplemental information such as the owner's calendar and name. The scope of this will be the development and testing of solutions to achieve these goals.
ContributorsOffenberger, Spencer Eliot (Author) / Kozicki, Michael (Thesis director) / Goryll, Michael (Committee member) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The software element of home and small business networking solutions has failed to keep pace with annual development of newer and faster hardware. The software running on these devices is an afterthought, oftentimes equipped with minimal features, an obtuse user interface, or both. At the same time, this past year has seen the rise of smart home assistants that represent the next step in human-computer interaction with their advanced use of natural language processing. This project seeks to quell the issues with the former by exploring a possible fusion of a powerful, feature-rich software-defined networking stack and the incredible natural language processing tools of smart home assistants. To accomplish these ends, a piece of software was developed to leverage the powerful natural language processing capabilities of one such smart home assistant, the Amazon Echo. On one end, this software interacts with Amazon Web Services to retrieve information about a user's speech patterns and key information contained in their speech. On the other end, the software joins that information with its previous session state to intelligently translate speech into a series of commands for the separate components of a networking stack. The software developed for this project empowers a user to quickly make changes to several facets of their networking gear or acquire information about it with just their language \u2014 no terminals, java applets, or web configuration interfaces needed, thus circumventing clunky UI's or jumping from shell to shell. It is the author's hope that showing how networking equipment can be configured in this innovative way will draw more attention to the current failings of networking equipment and inspire a new series of intuitive user interfaces.
ContributorsHermens, Ryan Joseph (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Burger, Kevin (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
This research lays down foundational work in the semantic reconstruction of linguistic politeness in English-to-Japanese machine translation and thereby advances semantic-based automated translation of English into other natural languages. I developed a Java project called the PoliteParser that is intended as a plug-in to existing semantic parsers to determine whether verbs in dialogue in an English corpus should be conjugated into the plain or the polite honorific form when translated into Japanese. The PoliteParser bases this decision off of semantic information about the social relationships between the speaker and the listener, the speaker's personality, and the circumstances of the utterance. Testing undergone during the course of this research demonstrates that the PoliteParser can achieve levels of accuracy 31 percentage points higher than that of statistical translation systems when integrated with a semantic parser and 54 percentage points higher when used with pre-parsed data.
ContributorsGuiou, Jared Tyler (Author) / Baral, Chitta (Thesis director) / Tanno, Koji (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12